Overlooked TV Shows 2016

The 10 Most Overlooked TV Shows You Need To Be Watching

One of the consequences of this being the "golden age of television" is that many great shows go unnoticed and unappreciated. For every House Of Cards, Game Of Thrones or Mad Men dominating the airwaves and social media jabber, there are a handful of others that are entertaining, hilarious, dramatic and suspenseful, featuring incredible writing, set design and acting, but that can't seem to buy an audience and live, season after season, under the constant threat of cancellation. So if you're looking for a series to catch up on before the next blockbuster series starts up again, we've got ten terribly under-watched shows for you to check out.

Ash vs. The Evil Dead

Horror movie fans are notoriously opinionated, and few horror movies inspire the kind of cult love that Sam Raimi's Evil Dead series has managed to sustain for over three decades. Well, the Starz network has made a ton of '80s horror fanboys happy by reuniting Sam Raimi and leading man Bruce Campbell in a television series that captures the campy spirit of the original perfectly. Oh, and did we mention they managed to get Lucy Lawless in a starring role as the villain? Expect gratuitous sex, violence and lots of decapitated Deadites. Groovy!

The Leftovers

The disaster genre, in movies and television, is as hit-or-miss as they come, but HBO's The Leftovers has been criminally underwatched. The premise is simple: after a global event known as the "Sudden Departure" causes 2% of the earth's population to mysteriously disappear, the world struggles to cope with the loss and come to terms with what, exactly, that disappearance portends. HBO only recently renewed The Leftovers for a third and final season, so now is the time to dive in.

The Man In The High Castle

You might not know who Philip K. Dick is, but chances are you're a big fan of a movie based on his writing. Films like Minority Report, Blade Runner and Total Recall all owe their plots, in whole or in part, to Dick's mind, and so we were more than a little excited when Amazon announced they were bringing one of his most famous novels to the small screen. The Man In The High Castle is a dystopian fiction that asks us to imagine a world in which Hitler and the Axis powers won World War II — and it's every bit as chilling as it sounds.

Nathan For You

There are moments in Nathan Fielder's brilliant, quasi-documentary comedy series Nathan For You that are so painfully awkward and cringe-inducing that they make Steve Harvey's Miss Universe fiasco look tame by comparison. And Nathan himself deserves immense credit for taking an original, out-there idea and turning it into a hilarious comedy show.

The Brink

You would think an HBO comedy series that brings together Jack Black and Tim Robbins would be a sure success, but The Brink — a clever political satire in the same vein as Wag The Dog, Dr. Strangelove and Charlie Wilson's War — has been cancelled, much to the dismay of its small but loyal band of fans. But if you're looking for a low commitment comedy, the ten episodes of The Brink are well worth your time. The Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi, a show writer and co-producer, has a particularly memorable turn as a Pakistani employee of the U.S. Embassy.

Ripper Street

British television is often slow to find its place among American audiences, but Amazon has taken a leap of faith with the BBC One's Ripper Street, a show about history's most infamous serial killer, Jack the Ripper, and the men tasked with bringing him to justice. Low ratings threatened to cancel the show after its second season, but the savvy investors over at Amazon Prime have resurrected it, promising to bring us at least two more seasons of 19th century English murder and intrigue.

Halt And Catch Fire

We live in the aftermath of the digital revolution, one of the greatest technological leaps in human history, so it's no surprise that we have lionized people like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak — the men who helped usher in this remarkable change. Halt And Catch Fire, set in Texas in the early '80s, takes a fictional approach to tell some hard truths about the people who brought us the personal computer and forever changed the way human beings interact.

Bloodline

Bloodline begins as a family drama as an estranged son returns home for his parents' 45th anniversary of running their family hotel, but quickly takes a turn for the dark and disturbing as the family's seedy secrets are gradually uncovered. Sissy Spacek, Ben Mendelsohn and Kyle Chandler each deliver stunning performances as members of the troubled Rayburn clan.

The Expanse

There has been a dearth of good science fiction on television for some time, but boy oh boy are things changing rapidly. Shows like Black Mirror and Sense8 have taken full advantage of higher budgets and better writing to tell their stories, and now we have a bold newcomer in Syfy's The Expanse, an ambitious, world-building adaptation of James S. A. Corey's book series of the same name. The series wastes no time throwing viewers into its massive world, in which humanity has split off into rival factions: the United Nations-controlled Earth, the Belters of the asteroid mining fields, and the Mars collective. At the show's outset, strange events threaten to start a war between Earth and Mars, and so what begins as a science fiction show takes on elements of a detective drama. The result is one of the most ambitious and imaginative shows on television, and a must-watch for any self-respecting sci-fi fan.

Black Sails

Incoming bold statement: Starz' Black Sails has perhaps the greatest mismatch between its quality and the size of its audience as any show on television. The first few episodes of the first season take some patience, as the show seems to take some time to find an equilibrium between raunchy sex, action and drama, but as it hits its stride and the plot begins to unfold, viewers are treated to one of television's most original shows, something that captures the fun of Pirates of the Caribbean without sacrificing character development or plot.